Intense artillery fire and bombardments hit the town of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, on Thursday, where the Israeli army announced that it controlled a strategic buffer zone between the Palestinian territory and Egypt.
Israeli national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said Wednesday that the war between his country and Hamas could continue for “another seven months” in order to achieve the goal of destroying the Palestinian Islamist movement in power in Gaza. since 2007 and author of an unprecedented attack in Israel on October 7.
Despite the international indignation raised by a deadly bombing on Sunday of a displaced persons camp in Rafah, the Israeli army continues its strikes and its ground offensive in the overpopulated city, launched on May 7 to, according to it, eliminate the last Hamas battalions.
After beginning operations in the east of the city, it progressed towards the west, leading to the exodus in three weeks of around a million people, according to the UN, most of them displaced again on the routes to already overpopulated areas of the besieged territory.
“Oxygen Hose”
The army said Thursday it had targeted 50 targets across the Gaza Strip in recent days.
Artillery fire took place in Zeitoun, in the southeast of Gaza City (north), according to AFP journalists. And Israeli forces targeted Beit Lahia and the Jabalia camp, according to witnesses. The army said it came under attack in Jabalia, specifying that a plane had struck fighters, killing two.
In the center of the Gaza Strip, Palestinians were burying relatives killed in a nighttime strike in Nousseirat, according to an AFP journalist. Children were looking at piles of rubble from a building, some of which were trying to salvage some objects.
In Rafah, witnesses reported intense artillery shelling and gunfire in the center and west of the city. An AFP journalist observed the flight of many people from the western sector, where at least four bodies were taken to Nasser hospital after a bombing, according to this establishment.
The Israeli army announced Wednesday evening that it had taken control “in recent days” of the Philadelphia Corridor, a 14-kilometer-long buffer zone which borders the Egyptian border along the south of the Gaza Strip, near Rafah.
“The Philadelphia corridor served as an oxygen pipe for Hamas, through which it regularly transported weapons to the Gaza Strip,” said Israeli army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari.
“Underground terrorist infrastructure”
He added that the army had “discovered a sophisticated underground terrorist infrastructure east of Rafah with a length of one and a half kilometers about 100 meters from the crossing” between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.
Egypt has denied the existence of tunnels under the border, saying Israel was seeking to justify its Rafah offensive.
Cairo and Israel also blame each other for blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid through the Rafah border post, the only crossing point between the Palestinian territory and Egypt, since the Israeli army took over. took control, on the Palestinian side, in early May.
This crossing point is crucial for the entry of aid which the population of the Gaza Strip, devastated by almost eight months of war, desperately needs. The UN and NGOs regularly warn of a risk of famine in the territory, where products enter in dribs and drabs via other passages.
The Gaza Ministry of Health also called on Thursday for the opening of all crossing points, in particular to “facilitate the evacuation of the sick and injured”.
Call for a peace conference
In Israel, the center-right party of Benny Gantz, a member of the war cabinet, tabled a bill on Thursday to dissolve Parliament and hold early elections, provoking a response from Likud, the right-wing party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Such a scenario would mean “a capitulation to international pressure and a fatal blow to efforts to free our hostages,” according to Likud.
The October 7 attack in Israel resulted in the deaths of more than 1,189 people, mostly civilians, according to a count carried out by AFP based on the latest official data available.
Of the 252 people taken as hostages during the attack, 121 are still being held in Gaza, of whom 37 have died according to the army.
In retaliation, Israel vowed to annihilate Hamas, which it considers a terrorist organization along with the United States and the European Union, and launched an offensive that has so far left 36,224 people dead. Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas administration’s health ministry.
The war has displaced the majority of Gaza’s approximately 2.4 million residents and caused a major humanitarian catastrophe.
In Beijing for a forum bringing together China and Arab countries, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi called on Thursday to prevent any displacement of Gazans “by force”.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for an “extended peace conference” to end the conflict, saying justice should “not be absent forever.”